by Kuldeep Yadav | Sep 14, 2022 | Marketing
Publicity and public relations in marketing are so much important for brand awareness and revenue generation respectively. Many people got confused and take both of them as the same thing but they’re two very distinct things and publicity is just an aspect of public relations.
The relation of publicity with public relations (PR) is the same as the relation of advertising with marketing. Advertising is also an aspect of marketing as publicity is of public relations.
Let’s discuss more publicity and public relations!
What is Publicity?
Everyone has heard this word as it is so famous nowadays. Whenever someone does something to gain recognition people say look that person is doing publicity.
As we’ve said publicity is all about spreading awareness, and this awareness can be spread in several ways such as
- Event Information
- Interviews
- Magazine Articles
- News Stories
- Press Releases
- Publicity Stunts
- Public Speaking
- Self-authored articles
- Speaking Engagements
You need to decide which way is the best suitable for your brand and how it’s going to help in increasing brand awareness of your brand. Publicity is one of the many facets of PR and depicts an individual’s or company’s presence in the media.
We’ve discussed what publicity is, now let’s discuss public relations!
What is Public Relations (PR)?
Public Relations (PR) is an umbrella term and consists of several aspects including publicity that can help individuals as well as companies to achieve their goals in the decided time.
Public relations are responsible for establishing and maintaining the whole reputation of an individual or brand through several marketing strategies.
A good reputation is the result of long-lasting and strong relationships built through public relations in marketing. Building strong and deep relationships with the clients helps in retaining and making them loyal and with time-being advocates of the brand.
Good PR are the sum of so many efforts in the various strategies such as;
- Announcements through different mediums
- Audience Engagement Efforts
- Civic Engagements and Crisis Management with SCCT
- Customer Relationship Management
- Community Outreach (Publicity)
- Conveying Brand Message with the help of narrative and storytelling
- Events Coordination
- Grassroots Communication
- Media Advisories and Kits
- Pitch Letters and Press Releases
- Public Appearances
- Public Presentations
- Reputation Management
- Social Media
- Social Responsibility Programs (Showing Corporate Social Responsibility )
- Good Support and Helping System
As publicity is part of PR, so, PR not only targets the existing consumer base but also the new markets. PR reaches every individual with the above-mentioned tactics. Public relations are responsible for creating and maintaining the brand image even in times of crisis.
Publicity and public relations have some similarities but even with them they also differ a lot from each other. Knowing the difference will help you in drawing a fine line between both of them. So, let’s get started with the differences between publicity and public relations.
Key Differences between Publicity and Public Relations in Marketing
Some of the major key differences between publicity and public relations can help you in understanding both of them on a deep level.
Meaning of Publicity and Public Relations
The meaning of publicity is promotion and it is used to gain people’s attention and increase brand awareness. Publicity can be done in any suitable way such as circulating information or providing news to the media, spreading stories, and write-ups about the brand. Mass media is used to enhance public visibility about the brand and publicity is also described in the form of public visibility and exposure.
On the other hand, public relation is a strategic process in which strategic personalized messages are sent to specific audiences to influence their buying behavior and decisions. These strategic personalized messages help build strong relationships with consumers and create a company’s positive image in the eyes of the public.
PR is used to create a positive brand reputation and maintain this brand image with PR marketing strategies.
Aim of Publicity and Public Relations
The aim of publicity is to create brand awareness through whatever means possible but mass media or press is preferred because of the capacity of reaching to masses.
On the other hand, PR aims to increase sales by building strong long-lasting relationships with the consumers. These relationships make consumers loyal to the brands and furthermore this loyalty makes them the advocate of the brand. Thus, sales and revenue are increased through PR. The aim of public relations is to target potential consumers to increase sales and return on investment.
Control
As we know that publicity just aims to create brand awareness through any means, so you can comprehend that we can’t keep control over publicity.
On the other hand, the company is responsible for public relations, so the brand has complete control over public relations.
Nature of Publicity and Public Relations
As there’s no control over publicity so it’s organic and being organic there may be positive and negative impacts of publicity on the perception of the public.
On the other hand, PR is managed by the company itself and has complete control. So, there’s only a positive impact of public relations on the perception of the public.
Scope
The scope of the publicity is narrowed down to the mass media and press releases and it’s just one facet of public relations.
On the other hand, public relations has a broad scope with several different marketing strategies and efforts along with publicity.
Form of Communication
As publicity is done through the media, so it is a form of non-paid communication, as the media gathers the news stories and articles on its own.
On the other hand, the company has invested in public relations campaigns such as organizing events, so PR is a form of paid communication.
Now, can you differentiate between the tactics of publicity and public relations?
I have firm faith in you that after reading this blog and absorbing the knowledge you can easily differentiate and make the best use of both of the strategies for the success of your brand.
Benefits of Publicity and Public Relations in Marketing
We are going to discuss the benefits of publicity first backing up with the benefits of public relations;
Benefits of Publicity
- Create Awareness about the brand, products, team members, methodologies, solutions, expertise, and services.
- Increase traffic to the web application, mobile application, or brick-and-mortar store.
- Educate consumers about the true problems and their solutions
- Free of cost
- Reaching to all people with just a single campaign
- Give topics to people to chatter about the brand
- Increase mentions of the brand
Benefits of Public Relations
- Grabbing public attention
- Building brand reputation
- Increment in brand loyalty
- Increased numbers of brand advocates
- Increment in sales and retainer income
- Increased in the amount of return on investment
Wondering how amazing the benefits you can get through publicity and public relations! But, it’s true, you can definitely reap those benefits.
Publicity and public relations are connected to each other and the source of information is stories, news, and events, so we need to make sure that there’s no flaw in conveying the brand message and information.
Best Practices for Publicity and Public Relations Campaign
Best practices help brands to focus on valuable tactics while leaving behind the things that can have negative impacts on the whole campaign.
- As publicity can be negative and positive for the brand, so try to always maintain positive information and experience across the platforms of the brand.
- Connecting with bloggers, reports, news publications, media channels, and online press channels will help you in reaching to a broad audience while making announcements regarding new products or services.
- Create an events calendar for the whole year.
- Create a content calendar for the events with engaging, interesting, interactive, and relevant stories with the help of storytelling.
- Build unique stories with unique ideas.
- Don’t forget to mention consumer stories in your marketing collaterals and campaigns.
- Be authentic and provide genuine information to the consumers and build long-lasting and true relationships with them.
If you’ll follow the above-mentioned tips for publicity and public relations campaigns, then you’re going to run a successful marketing campaign.
I hope, we’ve covered everything until now, so let’s wrap up this blog!
Wrapping Up
Publicity is all about building awareness and public relations is about getting people’s attention while providing an outstanding experience with the brand to maintain good relationships with consumers. Public relations is responsible to maintain relationships with the targeted consumers, employees, government, shareholders, suppliers, and creditors.
Publicity uses press releases, publicity stunts, and speaking to increase public visibility and PR uses social media, events, sponsorships, and announcements to gain consumer attention.
PR is responsible for building a company’s reputation but it is also responsible for fixing the damages done by negative publicity or creating rumors by people with the help of stories.
One last recommendation for you, make use of psychology and storytelling in writing stories to convey information, brand, and consumer stories.
We’ve covered everything related to publicity and public relations (PR) in this blog, if you still have questions then please do let us know in the comment section below!
For more similar blogs, visit our blog!
by Kuldeep Yadav | Sep 8, 2022 | Marketing
Experiences are the basic elements of life. Everything that’s happening with us is creating a new experience.
Experiences have so much importance in our life, our life is made of experiences.
Some describe experiences in two types good and bad, but some say that an experience is just an experience, there’s no good or bad in it.
What do you think about experiences?
Using these experiences in marketing is called experiential marketing. Let’s discuss more about it!
What is Experiential Marketing?
People see a lot of promotional messages, advertising campaigns, billboards and so much more every day, and everyone has been fed up with these kinds of tactics.
What to do then if we can’t make use of these tactics of marketing?
At this point, we need to think about something out of the box, and that is experiences. Experiences create memories and memories are always memorable.
Experiential marketing provides an opportunity for its audiences to have face-to-face communications with the brands and their representatives. It is completely focused on creating memorable, creative, innovative, and unforgettable consumer experiences to establish deep emotional bonds between consumers and brands.
It’s sometimes also called engagement marketing as consumers engage actively with the brands through face-to-face communications to create memorable and unique brand experiences.
To create these types of engagements, emotional connections, lasting memories, and positive impressions, consumers are attracted and engaged with the brands through all five senses and deep emotions by using interactive methods and opportunities of generating unforgettable experiences.
So, have you absorbed everything about “what is experiential marketing?”
Now, let’s discuss the effectiveness of experiential marketing!
Why Experiential Marketing is so effective?
We all are emotional beings, and experiences evoke our deep emotions. Experiential marketing is a way to evoke those emotions that we want to have in our life by providing an opportunity to have such an experience in our life with our family, friends, relatives, and loved ones.
When brands provide such an opportunity to their consumers and consumers are building real-life experiences with the brands’ initiative then the company is not only getting new consumers but loyal ones that with time will turn into brand advocates.
Want to have such loyal ones and advocates for your brand?
If yes, you’ll need a refined strategy for that, and now we’ll discuss that strategy.
Are you excited?
Let’s explore the simple and successful strategy for creating an experiential marketing campaign!
How to develop an experiential marketing campaign?
Developing an experiential marketing campaign and strategy needs a thorough understanding of this concept. I hope you’ve understood the above-mentioned concept of experiential marketing. Now, let’s get started with the step-by-step process!
Understanding Your Target Audiences
I would say in every marketing strategy, this is the first thing everyone will consider to understand and define. Don’t direct all of the efforts in promoting your experiential marketing campaigns without knowing consumers first.
Most marketing agencies and companies don’t put their resources and money into work to research their ideal consumers and types of experiential marketing that resonate with the target audiences.
If you know what the needs, interests, desires, preferences, goals are and types of experiential marketing audiences might find exciting, memorable, meaningful, and worthwhile, you’ll be able to run a successful marketing campaign.
Define Your Goals
Goals, why are they have so much importance in everyone’s life?
Goals are the simplest measurement of your success. It’s just one but a well-known important factor to measure the success of anything, if you’ve achieved your pre-defined goals then it’s said you’ve run a successful campaign.
I hope you also would like to measure the success of your experiential marketing campaign!
If yes, then you need to define your realistic goals before starting the campaigns and build your marketing campaigns around those goals to achieve them. Customize the whole campaign according to your realistic goals.
We’ve added one word before goals “realistic” which means the goals should be achievable, and measurable. It also helps you in conveying the brand’s values and culture.
Create Clear and Personalized Messaging
How do you want to be called and treated with the words of some other person?
I hope you would like to be called by your name and want an offer completely aligned with your desires, needs, and goals.
Am I right?
I’m sure you’re nodding in ‘YES’.
So, wouldn’t it be great if you were able to create a clear and personalized experiential marketing campaign messaging for your target audiences?
It would be amazing and you’d achieve your goals in no time and with no extra effort.
It’s time to focus your energy on creating clear and personalized messaging according to your audiences and the goals you want to achieve through this campaign. Incorporate storytelling and personalized messaging to make brand messaging more effective.
Identify Key Performance Indicators
KPIs aka Key Performance Indicators are the quantifiable & qualitative measure of performance over time for a clear and specific goal that shows how effectively a company is achieving Key Business Objectives.
Now is the time you need for identifying your key performance indicators for the specific objective you want to achieve for your experiential marketing campaign.
KPIs can be anything that can affect the success of the business objective such as user experience, sales booking, queries, etc.
Develop an Engaging Value Providing Experiential Marketing Campaign
The better the campaigns are aligned with your consumers the better the brand will get results. You have information about your consumers who they’re and their interests, desires, wants, and needs along with the goals and what types of experiential marketing campaigns they’ll most likely want to engage with.
If your campaign is able to educate your consumers about something and bring value into their lives then it’s highly likely that it’ll be a successful one.
These are the 4 main types of campaigns you can incorporate into your experiential marketing;
Brand Activation
Brand activation campaigns are those which encourage consumers to actively participate in the event and engage with the brand.
Event Marketing
Event marketing is an experiential marketing campaign for a brand, service, or product through planning, organizing, and executing memorable, unforgettable, and promotional events. Through event marketing, consumers can directly connect with brand representatives and interact with them.
Retail Installations
Experiential retail installations can create memorable shopping experiences for shoppers as well as brands. If they get a valuable and memorable experience from your retail installations then people will willingly take pictures in the shop and outside the retail stores and post them on their social media platforms and share them with their friends and relatives.
Guerrilla Marketing
Guerrilla Marketing is about generating curiosity and excitement through surprise, unconventional interactions, interactive emotions, risk, and provocativeness in order to promote a brand’s products and services.
Check out more about this in our dedicated blog on “Guerrilla Marketing”.
These 4 main types of experiential marketing campaigns contain so many different small strategies in which some of which are;
- Conferences
- Parties
- Sponsorships
- Parties
- Test Drives
- Samplings
- Kiosks
- Pop-up Shops
- Contesting
- Meetups
- In-Store Experiences
- Auto Shows
- Trade Shows
Start building one of the most suitable experiential marketing campaigns for your brand and your target audiences.
Define Budget for Your Campaign
Defining a budget will help you in measuring the return on investment. Decide how much you want to spend on your experiential marketing campaign.
As experiential marketing includes so many moving and temporary things, before going out for promotions, we need to decide how much we can afford to spend on a particular experiential marketing campaign.
Leverage Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
Augmented reality is so much more sophisticated in providing an enhanced immersive experience to its consumers. Augmented reality provides consumers with the ability to try out the products before buying. As AR is completely based on providing an immersive experience to the consumers, so it’s great to incorporate this marketing strategy in experiential marketing campaigns.
Click Here to Know More about Augmented Reality and how can you use it in experiential marketing campaigns!
Incorporate Omni-channel marketing to Promote across Marketing Platforms
Incorporating an omnichannel marketing strategy in your experiential marketing campaign will provide you visibility across your marketing platforms along with a uniform consumer experience.
We’re even talking about uniform consumer experience in this marketing strategy, so it can so much more fruitful if we’re following all the omnichannel marketing strategies during the promotions of experiential marketing campaigns across the marketing platforms of the brand.
Measure Results, Optimize, and Again Execute
Even if you’re getting outstanding results from your marketing campaign, you should measure results. Measuring results and tracking the metrics will let you know about the areas where you need improvements in your marketing strategy.
You can optimize those weak areas and get better results in your next experiential marketing campaigns.
I hope you have knowledge regarding everything that is necessary to run a successful experiential marketing campaign.
Now, let’s see some of the main benefits you can get from experiential marketing;
Benefits of Experiential Marketing
Want to know what benefits you and your brand can get from experiential marketing? The benefits of experiential marketing strategy and campaigns are;
- Increasing Brand Awareness
- Increasing Customer Loyalty
- Higher Chances of Converting Loyal Consumers into Brand Advocates
- Increased Lifetime Consumer Value through Outstanding Experiences
- Exponential Growth in Sales and with the help of one-on-one interactions of people with the brand and increased word-of-mouth marketing.
So, you’ve seen what type of major benefits you can get with experiential marketing strategy. Now, without wasting time, let’s move ahead and wrap up this blog.
Wrapping Up
Experiential marketing is all about “EXPERIENCES”. It doesn’t matter what type of strategy you’re using, your consumers should get an outstanding memorable experience with your marketing tactics.
For providing such an experience you can couple experiential marketing strategies with other marketing strategies such as storytelling, personalized marketing, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, Omnichannel marketing, Psychology in marketing, conversational marketing, empathy in marketing, sonic branding, geo-fencing marketing.
There are hundreds of marketing strategies you can incorporate with experiential marketing to provide unique and amazing consumer experiences. Build your own marketing strategy and campaign and launch it.
Still, have any questions or thoughts related to experiential marketing? Let us know in the comment section below!
For more similar blogs, visit our blog!
by Kuldeep Yadav | Sep 6, 2022 | Marketing
Holidays, what a stress-relieving word!!! Everyone waits for them to spend quality time with family, friends, relatives, and loved ones. Along with enjoying, everyone spends a lot of money on entertainment and luxuries.
On the other hand, sales are planned on holidays, offers are provided by brands, marketing strategies are built, and a lot of business is done during holidays.
Everyone including brands as well as consumers waits for holidays. This is where holiday marketing takes place to bring back existing consumers and attract new consumers.
Are you excited to know more about holiday marketing strategy, best practices for holidays, and how to plan for them?
Let’s start with understanding holiday marketing!
What is Holiday Marketing?
Marketing tactics such as offers, discounts, and coupons performed during holidays to retarget existing consumers and target new consumers are called holiday marketing.
During holidays brands seek consumer attention with different marketing tactics because higher visibility will gain you more revenue as it’s the time when customers are actively looking for the products and services either for themselves or their loved ones.
Consumers are ready to buy, but are you ready to showcase your products and services on all the marketing and social media platforms where your consumers are looking for you?
Now, it’s time to build a holiday marketing strategy!
Steps To Build Robust and Successful Holiday Marketing Strategy
Building a successful marketing strategy isn’t a piece of cake, but not that much difficult if followed by a process. Following the steps below will make it so much easier for you to build a successful holiday marketing strategy, and it’ll surely become a piece of cake;
Define Your Existing Consumers and Potential Consumers
You already have defined your existing and potential consumers but if not then it’s time to define your consumers and build user personas.
It’ll help you in retargeting your existing consumers, and precisely targeting new potential consumers. If you have an understanding of who’s going to make a purchase you’ll be able to craft personalized magical marketing campaigns for your consumers. You can also take help from our blog on “Marketing Personas”.
Audit Previous Holiday Marketing Campaigns from Your Brands and Competitors
Auditing previous campaigns will help in understanding the logic and magic behind the success of previous holiday marketing campaigns. It’ll help you in repeating the tasks that make you win and avoid those that make you lose.
If you’re lacking something in your current marketing campaigns, you’ll get to know by auditing your previous marketing campaigns, even you can also have a look at your competitors’ previous successful holiday marketing campaigns.
You’ve heard this saying “History repeats itself”. Now, it’s time to repeat the success of your previous successful holiday marketing campaigns.
Build Offers, Discounts, Deals, and Coupons for Consumers
Holidays are HOLYdays, so they definitely demand something exciting, something sacred, something amazing. And what can be amazing more than an offer, discount, deal, and coupon code that can save you money?
Offers, discounts, deals, and coupons will help your target existing and potential consumers build a connection with your brand and make a purchase. Knowing your consumers first will help you in building customized and personalized marketing campaigns for your business.
Define Best Holiday Marketing Strategies and Messaging for Your Consumers
Holiday marketing strategies can be so much experimental as consumers are willing to buy here and tie knots with new brands as well.
So, even with so many experiments, you can get so much from holiday marketing and it’ll provide you with a thorough understanding of what works and what does not. Don’t copy your competitors’ successful holiday marketing campaigns as it’ll represent you as a copycat and will consumers a chance to compare your brand with others.
Schedule the Whole Holiday Marketing Plan and Events
Scheduling all the events and completing holiday marketing efforts will save you from the stress of execution. As we know that it’s better to start the promotions one week before the start of the holidays.
People start planning their holidays before the start of it, so, you need to be smarter and plan your whole marketing campaigns and events and schedule them to avoid any delay in execution.
Execution on Time
Timing matters the most, if your competitors are reaching out to your audiences first, then you’ll lose. I hope you don’t want to lose.
So, you need to be better than your competitors and execute every task on time as you’ve planned. Executing on time and reaching out to the audiences before your competitors will provide you with a higher chance of getting more sales and revenue than your competitors.
Make Dynamic Changes by Measuring Results
As we’ve already mentioned that holiday marketing is so experimental, so you can also make dynamic changes in the campaigns.
If some campaigns are not working great then you can experiment with a more emotional approach to your marketing efforts and strategies. Holiday marketing is so much sophisticated for new and different marketing approaches, you can even change your brand tone during holidays if you need to.
This way you can get to know what is working more suitably for your brand and which type of tone is engaging more consumers with your brand.
We’ve discussed the 7-step framework of holiday marketing that can help you in winning the holidays in terms of sales, revenue, new consumers, and returning consumers.
Now, let’s move one step ahead and have a sharp look at the best practices we should keep in mind while working on holiday marketing strategies!
17 Essential Tips for a Successful and Effortless Holiday Marketing Strategy
Best practices help us in the proper execution of any marketing strategy and also keep us updated with the latest marketing trends in the marketing. Holiday marketing tips, best practices, and promotional ideas help us in refining our efforts and tactics. Increase your sales and revenue by implementing these best tips for holiday marketing;
- Provide holiday discounts, coupons code, deals, and offers to get the attention of your consumers.
- Make your checkout process as simple as possible with a maximum of 3 steps checkout process. Keep it easy, clean and secure.
- Experiment with your strategies and be ready to adapt to the changes quickly and effectively. Quick response during the campaigns makes you ready to react and adapt to the dynamic changes.
- As we’ve already mentioned that holiday marketing is amazing, exciting, and sacred. Holidays are Holy Days. So make your campaigns as if you’re saying your consumers to perform a ritual.
- Make content marketing your friend for holiday marketing. As people are looking for different brands during holidays, so whenever they get a glimpse of your business they’ll search about your business. And if the content you’ve on your platforms isn’t valuable and problem-solving to them, they’ll definitely get one step back and move to other products of other brands.
- We’ve discussed that content marketing is a crucial element in the success of holiday marketing, but what if the content isn’t optimized accordingly? You need to optimize the content now according to holidays aligned with your products and services. First research holiday-centric keywords, and then incorporate these keywords in your content related to holiday marketing. Perform this every year as keyword volume changes every year and people look for the products and services in different manners than last year.
- You need to be ready for competition and outstand from the competitors as everyone wants to make a big chunk from holidays. So, it’s a race you need to win but it’ll demand a lot from you, are you ready for that?
- Leveraging influencer marketing is great at grabbing attention and conversion. This is why you see more advertisements for your favorite public figures during holidays. You can also incorporate influencer marketing strategies in your holiday marketing campaigns.
- Don’t Fake, give them a valid reason to make a purchase, only then consumers will be satisfied that they’ve took the right decisions. Giving them a valid reason to make a purchase from your brand is like putting them into the driver’s seat in the whole sales process.
- Retarget your existing consumers. Most people that are easy to convert into brand advocates are your existing loyal consumers. So, give them something special on holidays.
- Sorting out your holiday marketing goals will help you in measuring the results.
- Appealing to holiday emotions and feelings that are flowing through the veins of your consumers during holidays. Tap into their emotions and feelings with storytelling, sonic branding, and consumer stories. It’ll help your consumers in establishing a strong connection with your brand.
- Provide personalized experiences to your consumers and make them feel valued. Make your emails and SMS campaigns personalized for every consumer.
- Delegation of tasks to the particular marketing teams such as email marketing to the email marketers, content marketing to content marketers, and so as paid promotions. But don’t let them create organizational silos, let them feel like they’re one team. Also, make use of automation tools such as blog2social wherever possible.
- Personalize your ad copy according to the holiday emotions and your targeted and existing consumers. You can also give try A/B testing in ad copies.
- Create positive excitement through all your holiday marketing tactics.
- Last but not least, also make natural use of urgency. You can use countdown timers, and limited-time discount codes to show urgency in your brand’s promotions.
Feeling like you’ve mastered holiday marketing and are ready to make a big change in the sales of your brand in the coming holiday seasons?
I’m also confident that you’re ready to implement it now, go for it and learn by doing. Now, let’s conclude the blog here!
Wrapping Up
Holiday marketing can be said as a part of a seasonal marketing strategy. Seasonal marketing strategies cover all the seasons, but holiday marketing covers only holidays that’s why we call it an aspect of seasonal marketing.
If you want to boost your sales and generate more revenue during holidays for yourself and your clients then make the best use of thoroughly explained holiday marketing strategy and campaigns.
We’d like to know your thoughts on holiday marketing in the comment section below!
For more blogs, visit our blog!
by Kuldeep Yadav | Sep 3, 2022 | Marketing
Crisis, is one of the most fearful words, right? We don’t want crises in our life and business, but still, most people face crises at some point in their life as well business.
So, the question is how to avoid and handle the crisis if it is happening in your business.
The reason behind a crisis can be anything and it’s not necessary that the crisis is happening because of the fault of the organization but there may be some uncontrollable factors. Situational crisis communication theory will help you in understanding the type of crisis and crisis management planning will help you in handling the crisis carefully.
Let’s get started with an understanding of crisis!
What is a Crisis?
Situational Crisis Communication Theory was given by Timothy Coombs, he described the crisis as a negative circumstance.
A crisis is a negative circumstance that can have negative consequences for an organization and its stakeholders such as employees, customers, and investors if it is not handled with care.
To overcome the crisis we need to first identify it and then need to communicate properly with our audiences.
First, let’s discuss the types of crises!
Types of Crisis
Crisis are being classified on the basis of cause and effect. On the basis of what caused the crisis and what the effects of the crisis on a particular organisation would be, determine the type of crisis an organisation is facing.
The developer of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) Timothy Coombs divided crises into three types; Victim, Accidental and Preventable. But we’re going to discuss other types of crises also, one thing more to bring to attention, one crisis can overlap with other.
Victim Crisis
In the victim crisis, the victim of the situation is the organization itself. The cause of the victim crisis can be any rumour or natural disaster. No one can prevent a victim crisis, as there’s no way of preventing a natural event that can destroy the physical infrastructure of the organization.
As the company isn’t responsible for the crisis but instead a victim itself, there’s no significant threat to the reputation of the company because of the victim crisis.
Accidental Crisis
An accidental crisis happens when the organization is at fault for the accident. The organization didn’t want to cause the crisis intentionally but it took place.
The cause of an accidental crisis can be any product or service failure or any allegations from the consumers. As the brands are at fault in this crisis so accidental crises can cause significant damage to the reputation of the organization.
It’s better to address these crises as soon as possible and get over them.
Preventable Crisis
These crises are caused when a brand takes risks for the betterment and it causes the crisis. The cause of these crises can be any fundraising campaign that went sideways and the company couldn’t fulfil the promises made during the campaign.
These types of crises are so much fatal and can cause serious damage to the brand’s reputation. The situational crisis communication theory is made to deal with these types of crises in a smooth way.
We’ve discussed the main crises mentioned by Timothy Coombs in his situational crisis communication theory, now we’re going to discuss some more crises;
Financial Crisis
Any company face a financial crisis when it faces a significant amount of drop in demand for the company’s products and services. The result is company loses its value in the market and the brand has to look for new sources for generating a good amount of long-term income.
Natural Crisis
Natural crises are difficult to see coming. Before starting any infrastructure, you need to consider all the natural reports about the particular place for the offices. Always build workspaces suitable for all weather crises.
Organizational Crisis
Organizational crises happen when brands start thinking about their own profit instead of focusing on consumers’ needs and user experience. Sometimes it also happens because of the creation of organizational silos i.e. lack of communication between different marketing teams.
Personnel Crisis
A Personnel crisis is caused by the misconduct of a person associated with a brand. To avoid these type of crises the company need to explain the work ethics and mould employees according to the culture of the organization. When the employees will be aligned with the vision and mission of the company they’ll less likely to want to be involved in any unethical or illegal things.
Technological Crisis
Technological crises are because by server failure or issues in the technical system of the organization. Many big companies such as GoDaddy have already faced this crisis. To avoid and prevent this crisis you need to have an excellent technical team on board. So, first, they’ll avoid these types of crises and if anything happens with the system, they’ll be able to remedy the situation in no time.
Social Media Crisis
Discussing errors in judgements or service issues on social media are considered social media crises as sometimes they may escalate into a large crisis.
As we all know social media is a platform where consumers share their opinions and thoughts about something with their friends and families, and it’s also a place where they bring out their frustrations on the brand after facing irregularities in their services or products. This is the reason social media is considered a social listening tool.
So handle your consumers, solve their queries and build a big family of happy consumers!
We’ve discussed all the types of crises including the three main crises described by Timothy Coombs in SCCT.
Now let’s move ahead and discuss what a situational crisis is.
What is a situational crisis?
All the crises that are unexpected, uncontrollable and damageable are considered situational crises. As situational crises pose threats to the reputation of the business, they need to be taken care of as soon as possible and with care.
To handle the situational crisis we need to communicate with the audience. For quick and improved communication situational crisis communicational theory was created.
All the above-mentioned crises are considered situational crises but the 3 are main and most important crises that are victim crisis, accidental crisis, and preventable crisis.
Situational crises can be caused by many issues such as unexpected events, extreme weather events, supply chain issues, defective products, drop and hype in demands, misconduct of employees or management, mishandled customer complaints etc.
So, avoid these things and no crises will happen, but what if we’re unable to avoid them?
Then, the solution is situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), now we’ll understand it deeply.
What is situational crisis communication theory?
Situational crisis communication theory is a principle that tells brands how they should respond to a crisis. Response strategies have been described in the SCCT and these response strategies guide brands to communicate quickly and appropriately with audiences to handle a crisis.
There are 4 types of crisis response communication strategies that are Bolster, Deny, Diminish and Rebuild.
These strategies will light your path in times of crisis by showing you the steps for resolving the crisis as quickly and appropriately as possible.
Let’s discuss all of the strategies one by one;
Bolster
Do you like assets? Everyone wants to have assets and bolstering strategy represents the organization as an asset to its stakeholders.
It’s a prominent strategy to be used when a brand is facing a victim crisis. Whenever the brand starts facing a victim crisis, with the help of this strategy you can make your consumers keep firm faith in your organization by appreciating their loyalty and reminding their positive past experiences with the brand.
One more thing to keep in mind, you can use this strategy to handle any type of crisis by combining it with other strategies.
Deny
Is there any moment in your life when you’re being accused of something without any fault, what was your reaction then?
You definitely have resisted the accusations and denied them. Why, because you know you’ve not done any mistake.
You can use this method of denial when your organization is facing some false and invalid accusations or rumours that are harmful.
In this situation, you can confront the accusers claiming that you’re not responsible for anything that is happening that there is no crisis or another party should be blamed for this.
Confronting the accusers will stop the escalation of the crisis but it’ll only work only when your organization is truly at no fault for the situation and save you from rebuilding the relationship with your consumers.
Diminish
If the company is also responsible at some places for the crisis then using the diminish strategy will lower the responsibility of the organization.
This strategy looks a little bit defensive or negligent because the company justify and offers excuses for the actions they’ve taken. That’s why it also should frequently be used in victim crises where a company is not at fault.
It can also be useful in accidental crises only if the company doesn’t have any past crisis history and has had a positive experience with consumers.
Rebuild
The last strategy in situational crisis communication theory is rebuilding. This is best suitable for accidental and preventable crises where the reputation of the company has been severely damaged.
In this strategy, the company first redeem its reputation and then rebuild its relationships with stakeholders.
There’re three steps that are followed in rebuilding strategy;
- Taking responsibility for the crisis
- Apologizing for the actions
- Offering appropriate compensation to the users affected by the outcome of the crisis
It’s also used when the brand has faced similar crises in the past. So, use it to remove negative reputation from the market in the situation of accidental and preventable crises.
We’ve discussed the situational crisis communication theory and 4 response communication strategies to deal with crises.
Now, let’s have a look at the steps for proper use of the SCCT for crises!
Steps for Efficiently Using Situational Crisis Communication Theory
Every business should have a crisis management plan in place so that when they need it they can execute it quickly and appropriately.
Quick and appropriate decision matters so much in a crisis because if the decision wouldn’t quick then it’d be difficult to repair the damages and if the decision wouldn’t appropriate it’d worsen the situation.
You may follow the following steps to build a crisis management plan for your business and always keep it updated with the latest innovations;
Understand and Identify the Crisis
If you’ve started facing a crisis then you first need to categorize it. Identify which type of crisis you’re facing. We know that there are 3 main crises that are victim, accidental, and preventable and so many complementary crises.
Knowing the crisis will help you in building your public communication strategy for different platforms such as a notice on the website, addressing on social media, sending a press release, and organizing a seminar and press conference.
Decide Whom You Want To Address
It depends on you whom you want to address first your stakeholders, employees, consumers or the public.
Deciding will help you in communicating properly and convey the message quickly and appropriately as possible.
Identify Your Strategy and Goal
We’ve discussed four strategies that are bolster, deny, diminish and rebuild in the situational crisis communication theory. You need to identify on the basis of the crisis which strategy is going to work for your brand.
Alongside this, you need to define the goals you want to achieve by implementing those strategies. If we have already defined the goals we can measure the success of the situational crisis communication theory campaigns.
Take suggestions from your employees and trusted consultants
Taking suggestions from your employees and trusted consultants can show you a better path to overcome the crisis in a way you can never think of.
Brainstorm with the people who’ve dealt with similar crises having better analytical skills and insights or consultants who have had similar experiences in crisis management.
This will help you in building proper communication messaging with methods of proper execution of the plan.
Send E-mail to all associated consumers
As we’ve determined communication strategy and messaging, it’s time to send an email to all the associated consumers with the crisis that will show consumers your spontaneity in solving the crisis.
They’ll be aware of the efforts you’re putting to overcome the crisis, and they’ll feel satisfied and fearless that it’ll get over soon.
You can also provide the details of your support team for any questions the consumers want to ask the brand related to the crisis.
Launch a Press Conference and Press Release
Launching a press conference and publishing a press release will make your consumers aware of the real situations the brand is facing instead of just rumours.
You can include every small and significant detail in the press conference and press release. Include the reason behind the crisis, what is the crisis, how you’re dealing with the crisis, and how much time will it take to solve the problem or compensations if you’re offering.
Put a Notice on All Marketing Platforms of the Brand such as Social Media and the Website
Putting a notice on social media platforms and websites will make aware of your existing and previous consumers about the situation.
Put a clear message about the crisis and the steps you’ve taken to deal with it. You can also mention the compensation offered to all the affected consumers.
I hope we’ve covered everything to deal with the situational crises. Now, let’s have a look at the benefits of situational crisis communication theory and crisis management plans.
Benefits of SCCT and Situational Crisis Management Plan
If you’ve already determined a situational crisis management plan then you’ll be able to ensure a smoother and quick crisis response.
Having a plan in place can also save you a lot of time and provide peace of mind in times of crisis. Here are some of the major benefits SCCT can provide to your organization;
- Having a management plan beforehand
- Understanding the situation and types of crisis
- Quick and Appropriate response in no time
- Saving time and providing peace of mind by having a management plan
- Smooth communication through the right marketing platforms
- Don’t let you panic in times of crisis
- Offering apologizes and compensation to only targeted and affected audiences
Counting the benefits of situational crisis communication theory, there’s a lot, right? You can also get these benefits in times of crisis if you’ve already followed situational crisis communication theory and built a management plan for times of crisis.
Now, let’s wrap up this blog!
Conclusion
Most crises are unexpected and they can make a lot of damage to the brand’s infrastructure and reputation if not dealt with properly. To handle the crisis quick, well and professionally a situational crisis communication theory was developed that provides a great chance of recovering from the crisis in no time and with fewer efforts.
Situational crisis communication theory is also referred to as SCCT and was developed by Timothy Coombs to handle the crisis and build a quick and appropriate response plan and messaging.
You can properly communicate and convey your messages with the help of SCCT if your business is facing such situations.
Even some of the big brands grew stronger from the crises by properly dealing with them, so have a valuable crisis management strategy.
Are you going to build a crisis management plan for your brand? Please do let us know in the comment section what thoughts are coming to your mind about your brand by reading this article!
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by Kuldeep Yadav | Aug 31, 2022 | Marketing
Empathy in marketing is such a great state of having the power of understanding the perspective of another person’s feelings and emotions as if they are your own.
Have you ever experienced it?
I’m sure everyone has experienced it once in a while. Will you like to listen to a short story to understand it better and how I came to know about empathy?
One day one of my knowns called me, I haven’t talked to that person for many months. But he called me and asked for my help. I listened to his problem and helped him even though I barely know him. Here, I had two options either not to help or to help him. I chose the second one.
This is not an issue if it happens with you once in a while, but it happened with me every time, and I couldn’t say no to anyone at least once.
One day I was talking to someone, that person is in the field of healing, and I told her why this happens to me every time, and why I can’t control myself. She told me I’m an Empath and it’s natural for me but it’s not natural for everyone.
Then, I started digging about it and came to know that we use empathy in our daily lives, and because of having empathy in me I helped those people.
Some People use empathy to ask for help even though they don’t need help, it’s for us to determine whether is it the right decision to help or not.
You can take the right decision only when you know about empathy in depth. Even I myself started identifying who need my help and who doesn’t. So, let’s explore empathy in marketing more and take the right decision!
What is Empathy in Marketing?
Empathy is a vast concept in the field of marketing. In simple words, Empathy is the power of understanding what someone else is going through. It enables a person to see the world from another person’s perspective.
Marketers use common words for elaborating empathy in marketing such as, “Empathy is all about putting yourself in your audience’s shoes”.
Two well-known psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman have classified Empathy into three aspects;
Cognitive Empathy
Cognitive Empathy is also called perspective-taking. In cognitive empathy, you’re only aware of the emotional state of other people. Cognitive Empathy gives you the power to get to know how another person is feeling and what he/she might be thinking at the moment. In this situation, you only have a perspective, so it’s called perspective-taking.
You can build your perspective through several means such as conducting audience research, social media listening etc. You can know what your consumers are feeling just by observing and listening to your consumers without engaging with them.
Emotional Empathy
We took the perspective of other people in cognitive empathy, but emotional empathy moves one step ahead. It’s the state of empathy where you start feeling the emotions that the next person is feeling. It happens because you start engaging with the person to share those emotions.
If you start experiencing the emotions your target audience is feeling, you can optimize the brand messaging according to the emotions.
Compassionate Empathy
Compassionate Empathy is balanced between cognitive and emotional empathy. Compassionate empathy gives you the power to not only understand the perspective but also feel the emotions that other persons are feeling. And this empathy allows people to help spontaneously when another person is in need of something.
I hope you’ve understood everything about empathy. I would like to put light on sympathy also. In both sympathy and empathy, we understand the thoughts and emotions from the point of view of that person who’s facing the situation rather than our own.
As we know in empathy we feel the emotions of another person, but in sympathy, we keep an emotional distance from the person who’s facing the situation.
Sympathy is just about understanding, not feeling those emotions, and a sympathizer will not be willing to help as much as an empathizer will.
I hope now you understand empathy, and how sympathy works. One more thing I would like to bring to attention, empathy doesn’t happen naturally for a lot of people.
Let’s move and discuss the tips for incorporating empathy in marketing!
Tips for Incorporating Empathy in Marketing
If you know a little bit about marketing, you can easily incorporate it into your marketing strategies. Empathy is the way of building strong relationships with your target audiences through connecting on a deeper level with them.
Here are some tips to remember to easily and successfully incorporate empathy in marketing;
Know Your Customers and Be Sensitive with their Reality
Knowing your customers is the first step in every marketing strategy. Research in the marketing, and build customer personas according to them. One more thing while performing research is to be sensitive to the reality of your consumers. As we all know that empathetic marketing is all about strengthening relationships with consumers through feeling their thoughts and emotions. It can all become possible if you’re being sensitive to the emotions and reality of your consumers. Knowing your consumers will allow you to understand the emotions your target audience is resonating with. Thorough market research will provide you with information about the needs, desires, pain points, problems, concerns, fears, and frustrations they’re facing. Ready to perform market research now?
Tell your customer what they want to know
Nowadays customers are becoming more enthusiastic and eager to know about secret recipes, resources, and whatever that’s happening behind the scenes. That’s why most of the brands you’ve seen sharing behind-the-scenes videos on their marketing platforms and this is happening most in the film industry. You must have seen many actors, directors, and producers sharing behind-the-scenes content. Are you ready to share behind the scene content?
Tell Origin Story of Brand and Let Customers Know Why You Exist
Telling your origin story will let your consumers know about your vision, mission, goals and the impact you want to put on the world through your brand. The essence of the brand is the values a brand is associated with. Show your brand’s purpose and values in a way so that users can connect with you on an emphatic level.
Put Yourself into Your Audiences’ Shoes to think like your customers
You need to start to think like your customers and for this, you need to put yourself in your audiences’ shoes. The best way to put yourself into your audience’s shoes is to listen to what they’re saying about your brand without reacting. It’ll help you in understanding the things your target audience is struggling with. Once you understand their pains, needs and desires, you can provide them with customized solutions to fulfil their needs and solve their problems. Always remember emphatic marketing is all about solving and fulfilling consumers’ problems, so build products to fulfil consumers’ requirements, not yourself.
Educate your customers
Education is what empowers all of us in several aspects. Educating your target audiences can be a great emphatic move you can incorporate into your marketing strategies. If you’re providing educational content to solve your consumers’ problems, then whenever they need answers to their problems, they’ll look at your brand to solve the problems. This way you can establish yourself as a problem-solver in the market.
Make your marketing interactive
Making marketing interactive helps you and your audiences to build strong relationships with each other. There are many ways of making your marketing interactive such as quizzes, and giveaways. Always make your interactive content as simple as possible. As simple as the process will be as much as the interactions you’ll get for your brand.
Tell Your Customers’ Stories
Customer Stories are a great way to incorporate empathy into your marketing strategies. As we all know, people want to see themselves in marketing materials, and customer stories are the places where customers can see their own struggles and problems along with the solutions to overcome those stressful situations. If you want to learn more about storytelling then read about it on our blog “Storytelling: Tell the Story of Your Brand”.
Use UGC to honour your customers
Sharing user-generated content makes your brand a responsible and caring one in front of your consumers. User-generated content can be of different types such as a collage, a review, or anything valuable information that has been generated by a consumer. It is a strong tool for building brand connections with consumers as users will only create content if they’re very much satisfied with your products or services. You can also say your users to develop content for your brand by announcing brand contests, giveaways etc. You will also be able to expand your reach by tagging your users.
Give Customers Useful Content
Since when marketers have identified the potential of content marketing, they’re putting so much content as a publishing machine. This type of content lacks empathetic context. Brands are focussing on producing so much content without paying attention to its usefulness, and value. All of this has created a state of content shock that means the content is not going to work anymore.
Is it so? Then, why are marketers still developing content?
Is there any way to overcome the situation of content shock?
Yes, there’s a solution, if you’re developing content keeping the context in mind using empathetic language along with solving the problems of your consumers with your useful and valuable content, then you’ve won the match. The state of content shock isn’t going to affect your business if you’re creating customer-centric content and helping your consumers to move on the right paths with your valuable resources.
Be authentic and Clear with No Confusion
Provide authentic content to your audiences with a clear and single message in one campaign. If you’re not having a clear conversation, it’ll create confusion and repel your audiences which will end up in losing consumers or loyalty. Do you want to lose the loyalty of your audiences? If not, then provide authentic content as much as possible. And even if your products or services are complex, their description should be clear and concise with a single message.
Empathetic Language in Branding Materials
Using empathetic language in your marketing materials, messaging and stories will help you in connecting with your consumers on an emotional level. This way you can build a strong relationship with your consumers in no time.
Improve UX of the Website
User experience and user interface tell so much about the brand. User experience tells how your brand is treating consumers, and user interface tells how much your brand understands your target audience. If you know your consumers very well, then you can improve both UX and UI in no time.
Listen and Observe closely to Map Buyer Motivation and Evolve
Listening empathetically and observing closely will give you deeper insights into your consumers. With the help of empathetic listening, you can get to know about the implied assumptions, beliefs and motivations behind what a consumer is talking about. To map your buyer’s motivations you should personally meet them only when you’ll be able to understand the context and nonverbal things such as feelings and behaviour.
Develop Personalized Conversations
Conversations are more natural than any other marketing strategy, and there is also so much value in understanding other person’s problems and solving them. Being so powerful conversations have a big role in therapy. Even one of our clients has named his whole initiative conversations, you can visit his web platform by clicking here. In the same way, conversations are also playing a wide role in marketing, and marketing through conversations is called conversational marketing.
Conversations work in a slow but effective way and contain so many empathetic values, so first invite your consumers, then listen to them as people want to be listened to, converse with them and at last when they’ve established good communication with them you may recommend products and services of your brand without hesitating. Be focused on developing conversations more rather than running campaigns.
Help Others with Your Services instead of selling them
Helping others with your services will also help you in return in terms of return on investments. And we should always try to help consumers with our services and products. But One thing to keep in mind is if you genuinely want to help people only then it’ll work as we subconsciously can tell if the next person is genuinely willing to help or not, so consumers will recognize if you’re faking for the sake of sales.
Provide Exceptional Value
Providing exceptional value through your brand’s messaging, marketing materials, content, and conversations will help you in establishing authority in your domain. So, be focused on consumers’ needs, and solving their problems.
Give them a positive experience
Providing a positive experience to your consumers will push them to get back to you for advice and guidance in future in the domain you’re providing services and products. It will help you in building retainer clients. So, if you’re willing to retain your clients, then your consumer experience should be positive, genuine and unique.
Well, I hope we’ve covered every tip related to empathetic marketing. Now, let’s discuss some of the benefits we can get by implementing empathetic marketing.
Benefits of Empathetic Marketing Strategy
Benefits are what everyone looks for. Implementing empathetic marketing has thousands of benefits in which some following;
- Using empathetic language will help you in establishing yourself as an authority in your domain
- Your consumers will start listening to you as you’ll be addressing their problems, and solving them with your solutions.
- Empathy in marketing will strengthen your consumers’ trust in your brand.
- Empathy in marketing will help you in building more brand advocates in no time and with no extra effort.
- It simplifies conversations with more deep insights.
- There is an easy generation of leads with the help of empathy in marketing.
- Empathy in marketing nurtures your relationships with your consumers in a genuine way connecting with them on an emotional level
I hope empathy has the power to provide everything you need from your marketing campaigns. Now, let’s conclude this blog!
Wrapping Up
People want to share their thoughts, emotions and feeling with others and empathetic marketing provides them with an opportunity to share these things as empathetic marketing is all about putting yourself in consumers’ shoes and understanding the above-mentioned things.
After the pandemic, people need more support on an emotional and mental level and they want to be heard and understood, you can cash this opportunity through empathetic marketing.
Start with understanding your audiences first, and feeling what they’re feeling, then establishing conversations with them along with following the tips mentioned in the blog. At last, you can recommend products and services to them. This way the number of retainer clients will increase drastically.
We would love to know in the comment section how you’re going to incorporate empathy in marketing. If you’ve any questions and want the help of the DigiAvtar Team to build your empathetic marketing strategy then Connect with Us.
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